According to Osho, Karl Marx neither directly nor indirectly advocates a religious society. Marx’s route—state power, dictatorship of the proletariat, then a supposed withering away—is psychologically naive and historically false; power doesn’t relinquish itself. Such coercion breeds a stronger state, not spirituality. True classlessness, Osho says, arises naturally with growing abundance and inward understanding, not by imposed revolutions.
No—Marx’s plan uses force and big government, which makes rulers cling to power instead of making people spiritual.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Karl marx's philosophy advocates a classless society and a stateless society. Is he advocating a religious society indirectly?
Marx was not a poor man. Even to dream about communism, even to dream about utopias, one needs to be affluent. Communism is a by-product not of the proletariat's thinking but of middle class people. The middle-class people are the most frustrated people in the world. The poor man is not frustrated; he is poor and settled. And the rich man is not frustrated; he is rich and settled. The middleman is very frustrated: he wants to be rich, and he hopes he can be rich, and he feels the poverty like a shadow following him. he is in limbo. The middle-class man is the most dangerous man. He is poor and rich bother, and he does not want to be poor and he wants to be rich. If he cannot be rich then he would like to destroy the whole society. He would like nobody to be rich. And…
Osho, there is a famous saying of Karl Marx—religion is an illusory sun that revolves around man so long as man does not revolve around humanity. Are religion and humanity separate?
Religion is the science of going beyond man. Religion is the art of transcendence. Without religion, man will remain merely man. And man’s remaining man is itself the sorrow, the pain, the anguish. Because man is incomplete; in incompleteness there is pain. No one can be fulfilled merely by being human. In being human itself, non-fulfillment is hidden. Man is like a bud. As long as the bud has not become a flower, it will be restless. Only when the bud becomes a flower will it open and bloom. Only when it becomes a flower will it attain joy. The bud is only on the way—on the way to becoming a flower. The bud is not the end, not the destination. Such is man. This is both man’s misery and man’s dignity. The misery is that man is not complete. Animals and birds are complete. By complete I mean: they…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ARE YOU IN FAVOR OF COMMUNISM? This man never even for a single moment meditated. He knew nothing of the inner; he was just concerned with books. What he has written in Das Kapital... no communist reads it. I have met hundreds of communists; no communist reads it. Every communist keeps it in his house, just as a Christian keeps The Bible. It is the bible of communism -- and they have created the trinity exactly: Marx, Engels, Lenin; and the bible is Das Kapital -- but nobody reads it. I have gone through it, from the first page to the last. It is all words, no experience; quotations from other books, but no authentic experience, not a single experience of his own. What kind of man is Karl Marx? Jews give a strange type of people to the world.
Osho, why do you think that now is the right time for the authentic religion to be born?
That's why I say India is a rare country: even Brihaspati is accepted as an acharya. Whatsoever he says is debated, confuted, argued about, but that does not mean disrespect to the person. Of course he is a founder of a movement, and what he is saying needs to be argued about -- but you need not kill him, or crucify him. He is challenging you: "All your religion is bogus; it is just because of the fear of death. And nobody has returned after death to say that he is still alive, so you don't have any evidence at all. Death simply annihilates everything." Karl Marx said, after five thousand years, what the Charvakas had been saying in India for that long a time. Of course Marx uses a more scientific terminology. He says, "Man's consciousness is an epiphenomenon -- it is not a reality but only a by-product."…
Question: A MAN CAME TO BAHAUDIN SHAH AND SAID, 'FIRST I FOLLOWED THIS TEACHER AND THEN THAT ONE. NEXT I STUDIED THESE BOOKS, AND THEN THOSE. I FEEL THAT ALTHOUGH I KNOW NOTHING OF YOU AND YOUR TEACHINGS, THIS EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN SLOWLY PREPARING ME TO LEARN FROM YOU.' THE SHAH ANSWERED, 'NOTHING YOU HAVE LEARNED IN THE PAST WILL HELP YOU HERE. IF YOU ARE TO STAY WITH US, YOU WILL HAVE TO ABANDON ALL PRIDE IN THE PAST. THAT IS A FORM OF SELF-CONGRATULATION.' THE MAN EXCLAIMED, 'THIS IS, TO ME, THE PROOF THAT YOU ARE THE GREAT, THE REAL AND TRUE TEACHER! FOR NONE WHOM I HAD MET IN THE PAST HAS DARED TO DENY THE VALUE OF WHAT I HAD STUDIED BEFORE!' BAHAUDIN SAID, 'THIS FEELING IS IN ITSELF UNWORTHY.